d in uncertain allusions, and controverted topics which
require a large amount of illustration and discussion. His philosophy
was not understood by himself, and it is a study to disentangle his
confused arguments, and interpret his doubtful language. He often
expressed his opinions with wilful ambiguity, took refuge in
equivocations, or had recourse to falsehoods, and we are constantly
forced upon perplexing investigations to recover the truth he
endeavoured to conceal. Fortunately his best poems and choicest passages
are least incumbered with puzzling questions, and his obscurities have
not much interfered with his popularity because the mass of readers are
content to enjoy the beauties and leave the enigmas unsolved.

The number and eminence of the commentators on Pope, the diversity of
their attainments, and the extent of their annotations appear to promise
all the help which knowledge, acuteness, and taste could supply. The
result is far below what might reasonably have been anticipated.
Warburton, Pope's first editor, had a vigorous understanding, and
possessed the enormous advantage that he carried on the work in concert
with the poet, and could ask the explanation of every difficulty. A
diseased ambition rendered his talents and opportunities useless.
Without originality he aspired to be original, and imagined that to
fabricate hollow paradoxes, and torture language into undesigned
meanings was the surest evidence of a fertile, penetrating genius. He
employed his sagacity less to discover than to distort the ideas of his
author, and seems to have thought that the more he deviated from the
obvious sense the greater would be his fame for inventive power. He has
left no worse specimen of his perverse propensity than the spurious
fancies, and idle refinements he fathered upon Pope. They are among his
baldest paradoxes, are conveyed in his heaviest style, and are supported
by his feeblest sophistry. His lifeless and verbose conceits soon
provoke by their falsity, and fatigue by their ponderousness. Lord
Marchmont said laughingly to Pope that "he must be the vainest man
alive, and must want to show posterity what a quantity of dulness he
could carry down on his back without sinking under the load."[5] The
exuberant self-sufficiency of Warburton deluded him into the belief that
the text derived its principal lustre from the commentary. He selected
for the frontispiece to his edition a monument on which were hung
medalli